Under Siege in Belarus, Lukashenko Turns to Putin

The agency quoted Mr. Lukashenko as saying that Mr. Putin had pledged that, if needed, “comprehensive assistance will be provided to ensure the security of the Republic of Belarus.”The Kremlin’s own account of the leaders’ conversation, however, gave no indication that Mr. Putin had offered any concrete support or even a clear endorsement of Mr. Lukashenko’s staying in power.The Belarus news agency said Mr. Putin had offered help to “ensure the security of Belarus in the event of external military threats,” which suggested that any help from Russia might not include security assistance against domestic threats like protesters.In its own statement on the talks, the Kremlin said that Mr. Putin had agreed with the Belarusian leader on the need “to strengthen allied relations” and prevent “destructive forces” from using the political turmoil in Belarus to “harm the mutually beneficial cooperation between the two countries.”Mr. Putin and Mr. Lukashenko, the Kremlin said, “expressed confidence that all existing problems will be settled soon.”As recently as last month, Mr. Lukashenko was accusing Moscow of engineering plots to overthrow his government and even sending mercenaries to Belarus to disrupt the presidential election, which was held last Sunday.But Mr. Lukashenko, facing the gravest crisis of his 26 years in power after claiming a landslide victory in what Western governments and many Belarusians dismissed as a rigged election, now seems to have calculated that Russia offers the best hope for his survival.The European Union, outraged by a violent crackdown on protesters by Mr. Lukashenko’s security forces, said on Friday that it was preparing to impose new sanctions on Belarus, while the leaders of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania called on the country to conduct new “free and fair” elections.Mr. Lukashenko, who has often been called “Europe’s last dictator,” has danced between Russia and the West for decades, playing each off against the other as he struggled to keep his country’s decaying economy afloat and stay in power.In Minsk, the Belarusian capital, thousands of people brought flowers to the Pushkinskaya metro station to a makeshift memorial for Aleksandr Taraikovsky, a protester who died there during some of the heaviest clashes with the police earlier in the week.The protesters were peaceful and there were no police officers at the site.